Raymonde Carasco Gradiva Sketch 1 (1978)
Step by step, delusions escape us like a snake between two stones. The solemn, ritualized repetition of a maiden s foot stepping on ancient stones has been described as a synecdoche, a trope by which the part represents the whole. The whole in this case is W. Jensen s novel Gradiva, immortalized by Freud, Bréton and many later French intellectuals like Jean Rouch or Derrida. It is a story about a archeologist who is entranced by the of figure an ancient basrelief depicting the walk of a young woman from Pompei. Shot with the assistance of Bruno Nuytten (known for his work with Duras), Carasco s Gradiva is a poetic construction about the fetishization of desire, one that seems to go against Freud s reading: the gracious movement of the maiden s foot is seen to be the object itself, not a mere referent, of male desire.
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